Assignment 16
Golden Master

Demo: Monday, May 11th at 11:15 am
Due: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:59 pm

Because we have pushed everything back a week, this "final" release is during finals period. Given the weeks that we have lost, it is possible that class will be extended into this period. However, we are not counting on it. Until we hear otherwise, this will be a submission-only release with no presentation.

The purpose of this release is too-fold. The first is to ensure that you can distribute your game at Showcase. In essence, you have been already doing this for playtesting. For iPhone we want at least a TestFlight release. For Android we want an APK. However, you might want to consider releasing to one of the stores already if that is your final goal.

The other purpose of this release is to give you one last round of feedback before your final submission at Showcase. In general, the game that you present as your golden master should be something that you are comfortable making available for download. If you have to drop the class to finish your other classes, this should be a release you can live with. But by giving you one last round of feedback we can help you earn the grade that you want to earn.

For this release, we will make another round of grade predictions. Unfortunately, we will not have the grade predictions until later in the week, well after the drop/S-U deadline on May 12th (I did not vote for that date). However, you can still use this information to make sure that you get the grade that you want at Showcase.

Presentation

There will not be any separate design presentation this time. If it is not in the game then it does not exist (and we assume that it will never exist). Most of your presentation should be spent playing the game. You should take us through the early levels and discuss how your level progression works. We have seen individual levels from you; now we want to see how they fit together.

However, for this presentation, we have a new rule. Everyone on the team must take a turn talking during the presentation. This is the end of a team effort, and we are not allowing the presentation to be the voice of one person. Ideally, each of you should talk about something in the game that you did that you were really proud of. However, we will leave the division up to you. It is only okay for someone to not talk during the presentation if that person is the one giving the postmortem.

Postmortem

The last 5 minutes of your presentation should be a slide presentation that provides a postmortem of your game production. A postmortem is a review of your game development process. In the postmortem, you identify the following:

• What you wanted to do at the very beginning.
• What you were actually able to achieve and how it differed.
• What prevented you from achieving those goals.
• What you would have done differently if you could do it again.

To give you some idea of the types of questions you should be answering, here are some postmortems for a couple of commercial games. These are clearly essay format, which is not what we want. We just want slides from you with the high-level bullet points. In other words, your slides should look like the bolded parts of these essays and you should talk about the non-bolded parts.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

This is a postmortem for the relaunch of the classic RPG Baldur's Gate (published in 2000) on tablets and modern OS's. The sequel to this game (which was released for tablets by the same team) is considered by many people to be one of the greatest western RPGs ever made.

Rocketbowl

This independent game was the 2005 winner for Technical Excellence at the Independent Games Festival. It is simple and straight-forward.

Oasis

Oasis was the winner of the IGF's 2004 Game of the Year and Innovation in Game Design awards in the web/downloadable category. It has also been used as a case study in past semesters of CIS 3000.

Presentation Schedule (Monday, May 11)

The last week of class is abbreviated. We only have class Monday. Typically discussion sections are on Wednesday. But we need three classes to finish off this presentation. So we need to add two classes, and they all have to be on Monday.

I am going to take a leap and assume that you are free on Monday at the same time as your Wednesday discussion section. Most of the time this is true, but I know that there are exceptions. Please e-mail the instructor if a large number of your team cannot make the time below (we can allow one or two excused absences).

Lecture (11:15-12:05am) [Zoom Recording]

• Synergy Studio (Eidolon)
• mooove studios (Pinball Mania)
• Studio Cupid (Swipe Right)

Section 201 (12:20-1:10) [Zoom Recording]

• Singularity Studios (System Access)
• Pirate Ship Productions (Runecasters)
• Coconaut Studio (Milky Way Gourmet)

Section 201 (2:30-3:20) [Zoom Recording]

• Enigma Studios (Spectral)
• onewordstudios (Sweetspace)
• B-Side Games (Deck Jockey)

Submission

Due: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:59 pm

We would like you to make another release for your game. The rules are the same as for the last releas. For iPhone, that means a TestFlight release. For Android that means creating an APK. While there will be no formal in-class playtest this time, we will play them and have comments back by the end of the week.

In addition, we would like your slides that you made for the presentation. Submit a file called postmortem. This file should be a PDF, just like all previous submissions.

Finally, you should not forget to turn in your last two week report. This will help us in determining final grades at the end of the course.